I'm sorry in advance

To clarify further, swinefeld always said in the context of debates about Affinity and Fringe characters that Fringe is not a faction that can be changed via Affinity. The reason for this was that Fringe characters can already be in any squad regardless of Affinity, so Affinity isn't bringing them in and therefore isn't changing their faction.


I think we have to stick to that ruling, but Fringe can clearly come under the category of faction in some cases. E.g. the WOTC-made ability Mandalorian Conscription has the following glossary:

It says "they no longer have their original faction", and this has always been understood as referring to Fringe as well as other factions. So Fringe can be a faction. And certainly is for Telepathic Insight since that's the way it has consistently been ruled.

That Jawa really is a rules nightmare. I am still kicking myself over failing to QC set 24.

But yes, there doesn't seem to be any reason to think that Fringe is not a faction for this effect, so it seems only 1 non-Unique Fringe Droid is allowed.

Since we're planning an errata, was the intent for the Warlord to let you play unlimited NU Droids from your squad's faction as well, or just 1?

The intent for the Warlord was to allow for a squad of Jawa characters to be able to use any non-unique droids they could. In playtesting it was clear that the Jawa squad was just becoming a Separatist squad. (Which is not what was intended.) The wording on the CE was an attempt to limit the pool, so as to not create a BX-Jawa squad. I like the idea of allowing non-unique characters with different names to be available, but the intent was never to allow multiple copies of the same droid to play in the squad.

The majority of the tech that the Jawas have access to is in the droids. They have no door control, movement braking, bodyguards or cloaking disruption without the use of droid allies. And are limited by not having many droid boosting effects. In order to get Fire Control they must use a CIS droid. That eliminates access to bodyguard or any other tricks found solely on the Separatist market. We were in a time crunch and went with the CE as it is now to try to avoid it being an exclusively Jawa Separatist squad. I wasn't fully happy with the result, but it was moving things in the direction intended.

That sounds fine to me.

For years and years now, whenever I've seen a Talon-vs-Vong matchup, the Yammosk has stolen Talon's free movement CE. Perhaps we've been playing that wrong all along, and only now (since we now know that Fringe is a faction) is it correct to play it that way?

I always thought that TI changed the faction in the CEs to be Vong...and therefore, I understood that the reason why the Yammosk couldn't steal Talon's +4/+10 CE was simply because Fringe wasn't a faction and therefore there was nothing to turn to YV in the first part of Talon's CE. (Therefore, if a hypothetical CE said, "While your squad contains only Rebel characters, allies get..." the Yammosk would be able to copy that CE.)

This was the exact reason I was told why It didn't work, not the wording, but that Fringe was not a Faction.

Fringe was treated like "Commando" or "Pilot"

Shawn, if that was the exact reason you were told, then that person was incorrect. The ruling on stealing Talon's first vs. second CE has consistently had the same explanation every time it was ruled. (For precision's sake, it's not that the Yammosk can't steal Talon's first CE- it just doesn't do anything, because not all characters in your squad are Fringe.) The reasoning is that only faction-specific *restrictions* (e.g. New Republic allies gain X) are changed to Yuuzhan Vong, and faction-specific *conditions* (e.g. While all allies are New Republic, allies gain X) are not. I agree that this seems like a somewhat arbitrary distinction which is not necessarily clear in the actual text of Telepathic Insight, but on the other hand it has been the consistent ruling since the interaction first existed. It's ruled to work the same way as Booming Voice, which changes range 6 to unlimited range, but only the restriction, not the condition e.g. GOWK.

http://www.bloomilk.com/Forums/default.aspx?g=posts&t=14113

http://www.bloomilk.com/Forums/default.aspx?g=posts&t=14242

Fringe is a faction for this too. If the CE was "If all allies are New Republic", it wouldn't change to "If all allies are Yuuzhan Vong" when the Yammosk takes it. Telepathic Insight just doesn't change that part of a CE.